As Fontaine's Champion Duelist and legal proxy, Clorinde moved quickly. Very soon, she had gathered solid evidence of Marcel—Vacher's—crimes.
Marcel had never imagined that such a well-hidden place could be discovered, so he had never even thought about destroying the evidence.
"Lady Furina, it's now confirmed. All those missing girls… it was this man, Vacher, who hid behind the false name 'Marcel.'"
Clorinde's voice was heavy.
From those pieces of evidence and the experiment logs, she saw that dozens of girls had been dissolved. Some were nameless girls whom hardly anyone knew existed; the actual number of victims was far higher than the cases they had previously confirmed.
"How disgusting…"
Furina, who loathed evil with every fiber of her being, clenched her fists, feeling deep pity and sorrow for those innocent girls.
"Scum," Lumine said coldly.
People like this were not worth any sympathy.
Even the death penalty felt like too light a sentence for him.
Navia, seeing these terrifying experimental records, couldn't help her pupils tremble.
Utterly deranged. The "Marcel" she thought she knew had been nothing but an act.
He had probably been trying to lower his presence, just so he could find more chances to abduct Fontaine's girls.
"Clorinde, take your people and arrest Vacher."
Furina's order carried clear anger.
There was not the slightest hint of guilt in the wording. A cold-blooded madman like that absolutely could not be allowed to walk free. Otherwise, it would be an injustice to every victim.
Clorinde nodded.
"Don't move, Vacher. You're under arrest."
She led members of the Special Security and Surveillance Patrol straight into Marcel's shop.
Marcel was stunned.
To be honest, his mind went completely blank.
How did they even know his name was Vacher?
He had just been picking out his next Fontaine girl from among his potential targets when Clorinde suddenly barged in. There was no way he could stay calm.
"Lady Clorinde, what has this humble shopkeeper done to warrant your personally coming to arrest me?"
Marcel forced himself to sound composed.
"You're the culprit behind the serial disappearances of young girls. At this point, what is there left to quibble about?"
Clorinde's tone was strictly official.
At those words, all the other members of the patrol turned cold gazes on Marcel.
What a piece of trash.
Before coming here, they hadn't known what their target had done.
Now that they knew, Marcel's actions filled them with righteous fury.
Marcel's face immediately turned deathly pale.
He knew he had been exposed.
"So it was you who killed my daughter?!"
A slightly older patrol officer grabbed Marcel by the collar. His eyes were bloodshot with grief and rage, his killing intent surging so fiercely he looked ready to tear Marcel apart and drink his blood.
His second daughter had vanished years ago, swallowed up by the serial disappearance case. He had hated himself ever since for failing to find the true culprit.
Bang!
Fueled by boundless fury, his fist—big as a sandbag—smashed into Marcel's face. Blood and teeth flew.
Clorinde did not stop him. She merely said,
"I didn't see anything. Just don't kill him—we still need him alive to stand trial."
She was not going to stop a father who had finally learned the truth from venting his rage.
"Yes, ma'am!"
The middle-aged man bared a feral grin and began pounding Marcel's face with both fists.
A few more patrol members joined in, laying into Marcel with punches and kicks.
"Ugh… ugh…!"
Marcel was powerless to resist. His screams of pain echoed again and again, but no one felt the slightest sympathy for him.
Had he ever spared a thought for those innocent young girls in the prime of their lives?
No one knew how long it went on.
In the end, the half-dead Marcel lay on the floor like a stray dog, bruised and swollen beyond recognition—a truly horrifying sight.
"Take him away."
Marcel was brought before the court.
The outcome was never in doubt—every piece of evidence was laid out in full view. Marcel didn't even get the chance to argue.
Once the truth behind the serial disappearances was revealed, Marcel naturally became the focus of all Fontaine's rage.
In the game, Marcel could still roar and rant to express his anger.
But after this brutal beating, he no longer had the strength to say a word.
"After deliberation, Vacher is found guilty and sentenced to death."
Neuvillette announced the verdict. No one objected; everyone felt it was completely justified.
In fact, some people even thought that in certain trials in the past, there had been others who should have been sentenced to death as well.
"Serves him right."
Furina did not personally participate in the trial, but she had already told Focalors that someone like this absolutely deserved the death penalty.
"It's just a pity about those dissolved girls," Eula said quietly.
"Now that Fontaine's people no longer dissolve on contact with the waters of the Primordial Womb Sea, if Marcel had still tried to use Fontaine girls in his experiments and discovered they didn't dissolve, he would have had no choice but to kill them to silence them…" Koji said.
"And then he would have gone on experimenting, one girl after another. The number of people he killed would have only grown."
Furina's expression hardened. Someone as insane as that really could have done it.
Once he realized Fontaine girls no longer dissolved, there was no way he would have simply let them go.
The moment his true nature was exposed, he would never escape judgment.
"Arlecchino, he's from Snezhnaya, isn't he? The Fatui have nothing to say about this?"
Koji glanced over at Arlecchino, who was sitting to the side watching.
He remembered that Marcel's next target had been Lynette.
"His actions have nothing to do with Snezhnaya," Arlecchino said calmly. "As the mastermind behind the serial disappearances of young girls, he also posed a threat to the children of the House of the Hearth."
Lynette was a Fontaine native and would naturally have been in danger of being targeted.
Although she was safe now, that was only because Koji and the others had resolved Fontaine's bodily dissolution problem in advance.
"If he could carry out experiments like that, he clearly wasn't just some nobody in Snezhnaya, right?"
Furina flipped through Marcel's research notes; his records were methodical and detailed.
"I've never heard of him. If you want, I can have the House of the Hearth look into it," Arlecchino replied, shaking her head.
A small fry like this was beneath the Fatui's notice.
If not for the serial kidnapping case, no one would ever have paid attention to such an insignificant piece of garbage.
"No need. We're not interested."
On the way to the 4.4 Execution Grounds, however, an accident occurred.
As the procession passed the Fountain of Lucine, Marcel suddenly let out a miserable scream and collapsed to the ground, no longer breathing.
"So it was you, then… That works too."
Sensing the disturbance, Neuvillette extended his perception through Hydro and quickly understood what had happened.
It was the murdered girls. The spiritual energy their souls had become had struck directly at Marcel's mind, shattering his spirit and killing him on the spot.
"I guess this counts as getting what he deserved?"
Paimon was at a loss for words. She had never imagined he would die this way. It really was karma.
"Neuvillette, does he still need to be executed after this?"
Furina scratched her head. Who could have predicted such a development?
"Lady Furina, the man is already dead. Unless you intend to have his corpse flogged?"
"Well, that would be going a bit far."
Furina shook her head. She had no interest in corpse-flogging.
(End of Chapter)
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